Nordenholt's Million

by J. J. Connington

  The notice-boards at the gate of Euston Station were covered with recently-posted bills; and seeing the word PLAGUE in large letters upon some of them I halted for a moment to read the inscriptions. They were all of a kind: quack advertisements of nostrums to prevent the infection or to cure the disease. I was somewhat grimly amused to find that there was still a market for such trash even amid the final convulsion of humanity. The only difference between them and their forerunners was that instead of money the vendors demanded food in exchange for their cures. Flour, bread, or oatmeal seemed to be the currency in vogue.

  The station itself was dark; but here and there in the Hotel windows glowed with lamp or candle-light. “Probably some select orgy or other,” was Glendyne’s explanation; and he refused to investigate further. “No use thrusting oneself in where one isn’t wanted. In these times the light alone is a danger signal when you know your way about.”

  It was in Endsleigh Gardens that we came across another living creature. Half-way along, I caught sight of a figure crouching in a doorway. At first I took it for a skeleton; but as we drew near it rose to its feet and I found that it was a man, indescribably filthy and with a matted beard. When he spoke to us, I detected a Semitic tinge in his speech.

  “Give me some food, kind gentlemen! Jahveh will reward you. A sparrow, or even some biscuit crumbs? Be merciful, kind gentlemen.”

  “Got none to spare,” said Glendyne roughly.

  “Ah, kind gentlemen, kind gentlemen, surely you have food for a starving man? See, I will pay you for it. A sovereign for a sparrow? Two sovereigns for a sparrow? Listen, kind gentlemen, five pounds for a rat—eight pounds if it is a fat one. I could make soup with a rat.”

  “There’s no food here for you.”

  “But, gentlemen, you don’t understand; you don’t understand. I can make you rich. Gold, much fine gold, for a miserable sparrow—or a rat! You think I am too poor to have gold? You despise me because I am clothed in rags? What are rags to me, who am richer than Solomon? I can pay; I can pay.”

  He kept pace with us, shuffling along in the gutter; and I noticed that the sole of one of his boots flapped loose at each step he took. After glancing around suspiciously as though afraid of being overheard, he continued in a lower tone:

  “Jahveh has laid a great task upon me. I can make gold! Give me food, even the smallest scrap, and you shall be richer than Solomon. All that your hearts desire shall be yours, kind gentlemen. Apes, ivory, peacocks and the riches of the East shall come to you. I will give you gold for your palaces and you shall deck them with beryl and chrysoberyl, sapphire, chrysolite and sardonyx. Diamonds shall be yours, and the stones of Sardis. . . . These do not tempt you? I curse you by the bones of Isaac! May all the burden of Gerizim and Ebal fall upon you!

  He broke off, almost inarticulate with rage; then, mastering himself, he continued in a calmer tone.

  “A few crumbs of bread, kind gentlemen; even the scrapings of your pocket-linings. Or a sparrow? Think what can be bought with my gold. Slaves to your desire, concubines of the fairest, brought from all parts of the world, whose love is more than wine. . . .”

  It enraged me to hear this filthy object profaning all the material splendours of the world; and I thrust him aside roughly. My movement seemed to bring his suppressed anger to its climax.

  “You doubt me? You will not hear the word of Jahveh’s messenger? See, I will make gold before you; and then you shall fall down and offer me all the food you have—for I know you have food. Look well, O fools; I will make gold for you this moment.”

  He stooped down as though lifting something invisible in handfuls and then made the motion of throwing.

  “See! My gold! I throw it abroad. Look how it glitters in the light of the moon. Hear how it tinkles as it falls upon the pavement. There”—he pointed suddenly—“see how the coins spin and run upon the ground. Gold! Much fine gold! Is it not enough? Then here is more.”

  He repeated his motion of lifting something, this time with both hands as though he were delving in loose sand.

  “See! Gold dust! I throw it; and it falls in showers. I scatter it; and there is a golden cloud about us. I give it all to you, kind gentlemen. Surely all this is worth a rat, a fat one; a rat to make soup?”

  He looked at us expectantly, holding out his empty hands as though they contained something which he wished us to examine.

  “Still you are not convinced? Not so much as a sparrow for all this gold? I have fallen amid a generation of vipers. Ha! You would rob me of my gold; you would take it all and give me not so much as a rat? But I shall escape you. Even now I go to prepare the streets of the new Jerusalem. Jahveh has commanded me that I make them ready with my finest gold. He has prepared the smelting-furnace here in this city; it burns with fire; and I have but to lay my gold in its streets so that they shall all be covered. I go! Gold! Gold!”

  He ran from us; and we heard his voice in Gordon Street crying “Gold! Gold!” as he went.

  After he had left us, we came by Upper Woburn Place into Tavistock Square; and it was here that I met the first petroleuse. Some houses were burning in Burton Crescent. Suddenly at the corner of the entry I saw a figure appear, an oldish woman in rags, carrying a petrol tin and a dipper. She hobbled along, throwing liquid from her tin at every house-door as she passed. Sometimes she broke a window and threw petrol into the room beyond. I lost sight of her when she turned into Burton Street; but she soon reappeared, having evidently exhausted her stores. She now carried an improvised torch in her hand with which she set fire to the petrol spilled about the doors on her previous passage. Soon each doorway was a mass of flames; and she retired into Burton Crescent, with a final glance to see that her work had been well done.

  “That sort of thing is going on all over the East End now,” said Glendyne, “and you see that it is spreading westward too. It began by the East Enders running out of coal. Then they took to lighting bonfires in the streets with wood from the houses, to keep themselves warm. And finally houses caught fire and they got the taste for destruction. You’re seeing the last of London. There are no fire-brigades now. It’s only a question of time before the whole city is ablaze.”

  Russell Square was dark like all the rest of the streets; but the moon lit it up sufficiently for us to see what was going on in Southampton Row, where a band of men were engaged in breaking into a druggist’s shop.

  “What do they expect to find there?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem very promising from the looter’s point of view.”

  “Cocaine and morphia, of course,” Glendyne replied, “or ether to get drunk on, if they aren’t very sophisticated. They’ll do anything to keep down hunger pangs nowadays, you know.”

  We crossed the south side of Russell Square, making for Montague Street, when my attention was attracted by the sound of singing which I had previously heard in Tottenham Court Road. The voices were nearer this time; and I was able to make out one line of the song:

  “Here we go dancing, under the Moon. . . .”

  “What’s that?” I asked Glendyne.

  “What? Oh, that? Some of the Dancers, I expect. We’ll come across them later on, no doubt. Nothing to be alarmed about. Come along!”

  Just as we were moving on, however, at the turning into Montague Street there came a soft whirring behind us; a great limousine car drew up at the kerb; and from its interior descended a tall figure which approached us. As he drew near, I saw in the moonlight that it was a thin and white-haired man, showing no signs of the usual grime. He seemed a gentle old man, out of place in this city of nightmare; but as I looked more closely into his face I could see something abnormal in his eyes.

  “You will excuse me for interrupting you, gentlemen; but I wish to put an important question to you. What is Truth?”

  Glendyne gave an impatient snarl in reply. Probably he was completely blasé by this time; and took little interest in the vagaries of the human mind. As for myself, I was so taken aback by this latest co
mer that I could only stare without answering.

  The old man looked at us eagerly for a moment; then disappointment clouded his face and he turned back to his car. We watched him without speaking as he stepped into it. The chauffeur drove on, leaving us as silently as he had come.

  When we reached the great gates of the British Museum, I was somewhat surprised to find them standing wide. I suppose that even amid the abnormalities of this new London my memory was working upon its old lines, and it seemed strange to see this entrance open at that time of night. To my astonishment, Glendyne turned into the court.

  “I just want to show you a curious survival in the Reading Room here.”

  Inside the building, all was dark; but by the light of an electric torch we found our way to the back of the premises. The Reading Room was dotted here and there with tiny lights like stars in the gloom; and within each nimbus I saw a face bent in the study of a volume.

  “Still reading, you see,” said Glendyne. “Even in the last crash some of them are eager for knowledge. How they find the books they want passes my comprehension; for, of course, there is no one left to give them out. But they seem able to pick out what they need from the shelves.”

  He threw his flashlight here and there in the gloom, lighting up figure after figure. Some of them turned and gazed toward us with dazzled eyes; but others continued their reading without paying us any attention. It reminded me of a glimpse into the City of Dreadful Night; but it seemed better than the things we had met in our wanderings outside. After all, there was something almost heroic in this vain acquirement of learning at a moment when human things seemed doomed to destruction.

  As we emerged from the Museum, it seemed to me that the glare of the flames in the sky was brighter; but this may have been due merely to the increased sensitiveness of my retina after the darkness within the building. We turned to the right and followed Great Russell Street westwards.

  We crossed Oxford Street and turned down Charing Cross Road. At the lower end of the street, houses were burning furiously, and I could hear the sound of the fires and the crash of falling girders. Beyond Cambridge Circus the road was impassable. Sutton Street seemed to be the only way left to us. As we came into it, I noticed that the dead were much more numerous here and that many of them held clasped in their skeleton hands a crucifix or a rosary.

  “Making their way to St. Patrick’s when they died,” Glendyne explained to me. As we came closer to the church, we found living mingled with the dead. Some of them were so feeble that they could crawl no further; but others were still making efforts to drag themselves nearer to the door. Organ music came from the porch, and I halted amid the dead and dying to listen to the voices of the choir:

  “Dies irae, dies ilia

  Solvet saeclum in favilla. . . .”

  It was weirdly apposite, there in the centre of that burning city. Then the choir continued:

  “Tuba mirum spargens sonun

  Per sepulchra regionum

  Coget omnes ante thronum.”

  Hardly had the thunder of the great vowels died away when from the crowd around us came a bitter cry, the sound of some soul in its agony. It startled me; and as I turned round, there ran a movement through that multitude of dead and dying, as though in very truth the trumpets had called the dead to life and judgment. The cry had been heard within the church; for a priest came to the porch and blessed them. It seemed to bring comfort to those alive.

  “Let’s get out of this,” I said to Glendyne. “We can’t help; and it’s needless to stay here. I can’t stand it.”

  “All right,” he said philosophically. “Personally, I don’t mind this so much as some of the other things one sees. These people, you know, by their way of it, have put themselves under the protection of the Church. Their path is clear. There’s only Death now for them, and after all, each of us comes to that in his own time. They will go out with easy minds.”

  As we came into Soho Square, I was reminded of the fact that even in this city of the dying, human passions still remained. From Greek Street came the sound of revolver shots: three in rapid succession, evidently a duel, and then a gasping cry, followed by a final shot. Then silence for a moment; and at last the noise of heavy footfalls dying away in the direction of Old Compton Street.

  “What’s that?”

  “How should I know?” Glendyne retorted. “Probably some of the foreign scum settling a difference among themselves. We never bother about this district. Too dangerous to poke one’s nose into. If I were to go and try to help, I’d most probably get shot for my pains. One gets to know one’s way about, after a time. A few weeks ago I tried the Good Samaritan on one of these foreigners and he almost succeeded in knifing me for my pains. I suppose he thought I was one of his friends come to finish the job. He was shot through the lung anyway, so I don’t suppose I could have helped much, even if I had persisted.”

  Soho Square was deserted. The mingled red and silver light from the burning houses and the moon lay across it; but nothing moved. We turned northward into Soho Street. It also was empty when we entered it; but while we walked up it a figure entered it from the Oxford Street end. As it approached, Glendyne made a gesture of recognition, and when the two met it was evident that they were well acquainted with one another.

  “That you, Glendyne? Glad to see you again. It’s a week since we met, I think.”

  It was a tall, thin clergyman with a clear-cut, ascetic face, clean-shaven in spite of the prevailing lack of soap. For the first time that night I saw that the city had thrown up a man who was definitely sane. His keen glance, his air of competence and his matter-of-fact mode of speech were in strong contrast to what I had become accustomed to expect from the inhabitants of this Inferno. Glendyne introduced me with some perfunctory words which left my presence unexplained; and the clergyman seemed to accept me without comment.

  “Things are going from bad to worse, Glendyne,” he said. “I’m sometimes tempted to take advantage of your offer and clear out some of these places with a bomb or two.”

  “What’s wrong now?” Glendyne inquired, without much apparent interest.

  “Well, I can stand a good deal—have had to, you know. But when it comes to open idolatry in the West End, I must say I begin to draw the line.”

  “Remember two can play at that game, if you do begin. If you interfere with them, they will interfere with you.”

  “Of course, you’re quite right. So far we have had no persecution; I’ll say that for them. But sometimes temptation is as bad as persecution, or even worse. Persecution couldn’t last long now anyway; and it would only knit us together: but temptation is a different matter. I’ve lost two girls in the last three days—enticed away by the Dancers. Sickening business, for one knows how that always ends. One of them was taken from my side as we were walking along the street together; and I was jammed in the crowd and could do nothing. She just cracked up, got hysterical and darted off. I lost sight of her almost at once. Of course she never came back. Damn them!” he ended with extraordinary bitterness.

  “Well, it can’t be helped. You do all that a man can do to keep them sane; and if you fail, it’s no fault of yours.”

  “What has that to do with it?” cried the clergyman vehemently. “Do you think I care one way or another for that? It’s the sight of these souls going down to damnation that I care about. In a few days we must all meet our Judge, and these poor things go before Him soiled in body and soul! That’s what hurts, Glendyne. Six months ago we were all living a normal life; I was preaching the Gospel and doing my best to bring light into these people’s lives. I doubt I was slack in some ways, knowing what I do now. I didn’t realise the gulfs in the darkness through which we walked in this world. I knew very little of the horrors lurking under the surface. And now comes this outpouring of Hell! I used to think one should cover up all the worst in life, keep it from one’s eyes. Perhaps if I had known more, I might have been of more use now. But at first I didn’t know.
I didn’t recognise the forms under which temptation could come. Half my flock had fallen before I had opened my eyes to what was happening, Think of that! My sheer ignorance of life, look what it has cost!”

  “Well, well,” said Glendyne. “No use crying over spilt milk, is there? You did your best according to your lights. You weren’t trained as a mental specialist, you know.”

  “Thanks so much, Bildad Redivivus, but I’m afraid your argument helps no more nowadays than it did a few thousand years ago in the Land of Uz. I ought to have known better; but I shut my eyes. I thought these things unclean and despised them; and now they have ruined my work because I did not take the trouble to understand them.

  “You can’t guess what it is like now, Glendyne. They are celebrating the Black Mass in Hyde Park and holding Witches’ Sabbaths. All the old evil things which we thought had died out of the race have reappeared, all the foulest practices and superstitions have come to life. It’s terrible.”

  “The old gods were never dead, although you pretended they were. Now they have come again, you have got to make the best of it. It’s not for long, anyway. Another week or two and the last food will be gone.”

  “I pray for that day, Glendyne. I never thought to see it; but I go on my knees many times daily and pray that it may come soon. Some of my people I know will be steadfast; but the contagion attacks the younger ones with an awful swiftness.”

  “Collective hysteria. I know. Keep them indoors as much as possible, especially the girls. You can do nothing more.”